Days 286 - 291

• Key West - the end.

Our time in Key West has come to an end. It has been wonderful but it has been hard on the liver and wallet. While we do not like to stay in one place to long, Angel gets antsy after three days, for me it takes about 5 days, but if you have to stay somewhere Florida and especially the Keys is a great place to stay. One thing we have both decided is that we really like being somewhere warm in the winter. I do not think either of will be disappointed if we never deal with snow again.

We have one more visitor join us in Key West, Ray Shaffer. Ray and I worked together for the state, and he was foolish enough to hire me to work for him at Criminal Justice. The first time I came to Key West was with Ray, and it is really great to have him here with us on this trip. He will also be traveling with us until Key Largo.

As the last week went on we also started to get the boat ready to move again. We made a last run with to the grocery store with the truck, stowed stuff we don't need, and had the bottom of the boat cleaned. One thing we do not have a problem with at home is barnacles and growth on the bottom of the boat. Because the water is so warm here, most people have a diver scrape and scrub the bottom once a month. When we had the boat out of the water in Tarpon Springs the bottom was clean, but that was six weeks ago. The diver told us that the bottom growth was pretty heavy, and brought us up a handful of barnacles. We could hear the scraping as he was working and I did not like how it sounded.

Of course while Ray was here, we went back to Duval Street a couple of times, and then it was time to say goodbye to Duval Street. Tuesday morning we will be heading to Bahia Honda State Park, and both Angel and I are ready to start moving again.